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Philosophies Ancient and Modern
PRAGMATISM
RELIGIONS : ANCIENT AND MODERN
Animism. By Edward Clodd.Pantheism. By James Allanson Picton.
The Religions Of Ancient China. By Professor Giles, LL.D., Professor
of Chinese in the University of Cambridge.
The Religion of Ancient Greece. By Jane Harrison, Lecturei at
Newnharn College, Cambridge.Islam. By the Rt. Hon. Ameer Ali Syed, of the Judicial Committee of His
Majesty's Privy Council.
Magic and Fetishism. By Dr. A. C. Haddon, F.R.S., Lecturer onEthnology at Cambridge University.
The Religion Of Ancient Egypt. By Professor W. M. Flinders Petrie,
F.R.S.The Religion of Babylonia and Assyria. By Theophilus G. Pinches,
late of the British Museum.Early Buddhism. By Professor Rhys Davids, LL.D., late Secretary of
The Royal Asiatic Society.
Hinduism. By Dr. L. D. Barnett, of the Department of Oriental Printed
Books and MSS., British Museum.Scandinavian Religion. By William a. Craigie.
Celtic Religion. By Professor Anwyl, Professor of Welsh at University
College, Aberystwyth.The Mythology of Ancient Britain and Ireland. By Charles Squire,
Judaism. By Israel Abrahams, Lecturer in Talmudic Literature in Cam-bridge University.
The Religion of Ancient Rome. By Cyril Bailey, m. A.
Shinto, The Ancient Religion of Japan. By W. G. Aston, c.M.G.
The Religion of Ancient Mexico and Peru. By Lewis Spence, m. a.
Early Christianity. By S- B. Black, Professor at M'Gill University.
The Psychological Origin and Nature of Religion. By Professor
J. H. Letjba.
The Religion of Ancient Palestine. By Stanley a. Cook.
Manicheeism. By F. C. Conybeare. {Shortly.)
PHILOSOPHIES
Early Greek Philosophy. By A. w. Benn.Stoicism. By Professor St. George Stock.
Plato. By Professor A. E. Taylor, St. Andrews University.
Scholasticism. By Father Rickaby, S.J.
HobDes. By Professor A. E. Taylor.
Locke. By Professor Alexander, ot Owens College.
Comte and Mill. By T. Whittakf.r.
Herbert Spencer. By W. H. Hur son.
Schopenhauer. By T. Whittaker.Berkeley. By Professor Campbell Fraser, D.C.L., LL.D.
Swedenborg. By Dr. Sewall.Nietzsche : His Life and Works. By Anthony M. Ludovici.
Bergson. By Joseph Solomon.Rationalism. By J. M. Robertson.Lucretius and the AtomistS. By Edward Clodd.
Pragmatism. By D. L. Murray.Rationalism. By J. H. Robertson.
IB
PRAGMATISM
By
D. L. MURRAY
WITH A PREFACE BY DR. F. C. S. SCHILLER
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1912
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CONTENTS
CHAPTER
PREFACE BY DR. F. C. S. SCHILLER -
I. THE GENESIS OF PRAGMATISM
II. THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
III. WILL IN COGNITION -
IV. THE DILEMMAS OF DOGMATISM
V. THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND ERROR
VI. THE FAILURE OF FORMAL LOGIC
VII. THE BANKRUPTCY OF INTELLECTUALISM
VIII. THOUGHT AND LIFE -
BIBLIOGRAPHY
PAGE
Vll
1
10
23
34
40
54
66
70
78
iob
PREFACE
Mr. Murray's youthful modesty insists that his
study of Pragmatism needs a sponsor ; this is not
at all my own opinion, but I may take the oppor-
tunity of pointing out how singularly qualified he
is to give a good account of it.
In the first place he is young, and youth is an
almost indispensable qualification for the apprecia-
tion of novelty ; for the mind works more and
more stiffly as it grows older, and becomes less and
less capable of absorbing what is new. Hence, if
our ' great authorities ' lived for ever, they would
become complete Struldbrugs. This is the justi-
fication of death from the standpoint of social
progress. And as there is no subject in which
Struldbruggery is more rampant than in philo-
sophy, a youthful and nimble mind is here par-
ticularly needed. It has given Mr. Murray an eye
also to the varieties of Pragmatism and to their
connections.
Secondly, Mr. Murray has (like myself) enjoyed
vii
PEEFACE
the advantage of a severely intellectualistic training
in the classical philosophy of Oxford University,
and in its premier college, Balliol. The aim of this
training is to instil into the best minds the country
produces an adamantine conviction that philosophy
has made no progress since Aristotle. It costs about
£50,000 a year, but on the whole it is singularly
successful. Its effect upon capable minds possessed
of common sense is to produce that contempt for
pure intellect which distinguishes the British nation
from all others, and ensures the practical success
of administrators selected by an examination so
gloriously irrelevant to their future duties that,
since the lamentable demise of the Chinese system,
it may boast to be the most antiquated in the
world. In minds, however, which are more prone
to theorizing, but at the same time clear-headed,
this training produces a keenness of insight into
the defects of intellectualism and a perception of
the intellectual necessity of Pragmatism which can
probably be reached in no other way. Mr. Murray,
therefore, is quite right in emphasizing, above all,
the services of Pragmatism as a rigorously critical
theory of knowledge, and in refuting the amiable
delusion of many pedants that Pragmatism is
merely an emotional revolt against the rigors of
Logic. It is essentially a reform of Logic, which• • • *
Vlll
PEEFACE
protests against a Logic that has become so formal
as to abstract from meaning altogether.
Thirdly, an elementary introduction to Pragmatism
was greatly needed, less because the subject is in-
herently difficult than because it has become so deeply
involved in philosophic controversy. Intrinsically
it should be as easy to make philosophy intelligible
as any other subject. The exposition of a truth is
difficult only to those who have not understood it,
or do not desire to reveal it. But British philosophy
had long become almost as open as German to the
(German) gibe that ' philosophy is nothing but the
systematic misuse of a terminology invented ex-
pressly for this purpose,' and Pragmatism, too,
could obtain a hearing only by showing that it
could parley with its foes in the technical language
of Kant and Hegel.
Hence it had no leisure to compose a fitting
introduction to itself for students of philosophy.
William James's Pragmatism, great as it is as a work
of genius, brilliant as it is as a contribution to
literature, was intended mainly for the man in the
street. It is so lacking in the familiar philosophic
catchwords that it may be doubted whether any
professor has quite understood it. And moreover,
it was written some years ago, and no longer covers
the whole ground. The other writings of the
ix
PEEFACE
pragmatists have all been too controversial and
technical.
The critics of Pragmatism have produced only
caricatures so gross as to be unrecognizable, and so
obscure as to be unintelligible. Mr. Murray's little
book alone may claim to be (within its limits) a
complete survey of the field, simply worded, and
yet not unmindful of due technicality. It is also
up to date, though in dealing with so progressive
a subject it is impossible to say how long it is
destined to remain so.
F. C. S. SCHILLEK.
x
1 . ) <
PRAGMATISM
CHAPTEK I
THE GENESIS OF PRAGMATISM
There is a curious impression to-day in the world
of thought that Pragmatism is the most audacious
of philosophic novelties, the most anarchical trans-
valuation of all respectable traditions. Sometimes
it is pictured as an insurgence of emotion against
logic, sometimes as an assault of theology upon the
integrity of Pure Eeason. One day it is described
as the reckless theorizing of dilettanti whose know-
ledge of philosophy is too superficial to require
refutation, the next as a transatlantic importation
of the debasing slang of the Wild West. Abroad
it is frequently denounced as an outbreak of the
sordid commercialism of the Anglo-Saxon mind.
All these ideas are mistaken. Pragmatism is
neither a revolt against philosophy nor a revolution
i
PBAGMATISM
in philosophy, except in so far as it is an important
evolution of philosophy. It is a collective name
for the most modern solution of puzzles which
have impeded philosophical progress from time
immemorial, and it has arisen naturally in the
course of philosophical reflection. It answers the
big problems which are as familiar to the scientist
and the theologian as to the metaphysician and
epistemologist, and which are both intelligible and
interesting to common sense.
The following questions stand out : (1) Can the
possibility of knowledge be maintained against
Hume and other sceptics ? Certainly, if it can be
shown that ' The New Psychology ' has antiquated
the analysis of mind which Hume assumed and1 British Associationism ' respectfully continued to
uphold. (2) Seeing that inclination and volition
indisputably play a part in the acceptance of all
beliefs, scientific and religious, what is the logical
significance of this fact ? This yields the problem
* The Will to Believe,' and more generally of ' the
place of Will in cognition.' (3) Is there no criterion
by which the divergent claims of rival creeds and
philosophies— to be possessed of unconditional
truth—can be scientifically tested? The sceptic's
sneer, that the shifting systems of philosophy
illustrate only the changing fashions of a great
THE GENESIS OF PRAGMATISM
illusion about man's capacity for truth, plunges
dogmatism into a 'Dilemma,' from which it can
emerge only by finding a way of discriminating
a ' truth ' from an ' error,' and so solving the1 problem of Truth and Error.' The weird verbalism
of the traditional Logic suggests a problem which
strikes deeper even than the question, 'What do
you mean by truth ?' viz. :' Do you mean any-
thing ?' and so the ' problem of Meaning ' is pro-
pounded by the failure of Formal Logic. Is Logic
not concerned at all with meaning, is it only juggling
with empty forms of words? Lastly, if from all
this there springs up a conviction of ' The Bank-
ruptcy of Intellectualism,' the question suggests
itself whether the relation between abstract thinking
and concrete experience, between Thought ' and1Life,' has been rightly grasped. Is life worth living
only for the sake of philosophic contemplation, or
is thinking only worth doing to aid us in the
struggle for life ? Are ' theory ' and practice'
two separate kingdoms with rigid frontiers, strictly
guarded, or does it appear that theories which
cannot be applied have, in the end, neither worth,
nor truth, nor even meaning ?
It is plain from this catalogue of inquiries that
Pragmatism makes no abrupt breach in tradition.
It is not the petroleuse of philosophy. It does not
3
PRAGMATISM
wipe out the history of speculation in order to
announce a millennium of new ideas ; it claims, on
the contrary, to be the culmination and denotement
of that history. It cannot rightly be represented
as trying either to sell new lamps for old, or to
jerry-build a new metaphysical system on the ruins
of all previous achievements. Its real task is
singularly modest. It aims merely at instructing
system-builders in the elementary laws which con-
dition the stability of such structures and conduce
to their conservation.
It is therefore a grave mistake to regard
it as a parochial eccentricity, as a specific
Americanism. Nor is it the product of the mis-
placed ingenuity of individual paradox-mongers. It
has come into being by the convergence of distinct
lines of thought pursued in different countries by
different thinkers.
1. One of the most interesting of these has
originated in the scientific world. The immense
growth of scientific knowledge during the last
century was bound to react on human conceptions
of scientific procedure. The enormous number of
new facts brought to light by manipulating hypo-
theses could not but modify our view of scientific
law. Laws no longer seem to scientists the immu-
table foundations of an eternal order, but are
4
THE GENESIS OF PRAGMATISM
inevitably treated as man-made formulae for group-
ing and predicting the events which verify them.
The labours of physicists like Mach, Duhem, and
Ostwald, point to alternative formulations of new
hypotheses for the best established laws.J The
physics of Newton are no longer final, and the
notion of ' energy ' is a dangerous rival to the
older conception of ' matter.' It is, of course,
indifferent to the philosopher whether the new
physics are successful in superseding the old or
not. What it concerns him to note is that dog-
matic confidence in the finality of scientific laws has
given place to a belief that our "laws" are only
working formulae for scientific purposes, and that
no science can truly boast of having read off the
mind of the Deity. As Sir J. J. Thomson neatly
puts it, a scientific theory, for the enlightened
modern scientist, is a 'policy and not a creed.'
Science has become content to be only ' a con-
ceptual shorthand,' provided that its message be
humanly intelligible. It no longer claims truth
because abstractly and absolutely it 'corresponds
with Nature,' but because it yields a convenient
means of mastering the flux of events.
* Even mathematics, long the pattern of absolute
knowledge, has not escaped the stigma of rela-
tivity. ' Metageometries ' have been invented by
5
PEAGMATISM
Riemann and Lobatschewski as rivals to the
assumptions of Euclid, and the brilliant writings of
Poincare have explained the human devices on
which mathematical concepts rest. Euclidean geo-
metry is reduced to a useful interpretation of the
data of experience ; it is not theoretically the only
one. Its superior validity is dependent upon its
use when applied to the physical world. Even
mathematics, therefore, lend themselves to the
philosophic inference drawn by Henri Bergson and
others, that all conceptual systems of the humanmind have a merely conditional truth, depending on
the circumstances of their application.
2. Another fountain-head of Pragmatic philo-
sophy has been Darwinism. Indeed, the Pragmatic
is the only philosophizing which has completely
assimilated Evolution. The insight into the real
fluidity of natural species ought long ago to have
toned down the artificial rigidity of logical classi-
fications. To know reality man can no longer rest
in a ' timeless ' contemplation of a static system
;
he must expand his thoughts so as to cope with a
perpetually changing process. Since the world
changes, his ' truths ' must change to fit it. Heis faced with the necessity of a continuous recon-
struction of beliefs. This influence of Darwin has
inspired the logical theories of Professor Dewey and
6
THE GENESIS OF PEAGMATISM
the ' Chicago School ' of Pragniatists. Thought in
their writings is essentially the instrument of this
readjustment. Its function is to effect the neces-
sary changes in beliefs as economically and usefully
as possible. It is an evolving process which keeps
pace with the evolution of reality and the changing
situations of mortal life.
3. It is not, however, entirely the reaction of
science upon philosophy which has given birth to
Pragmatism. Philosophy itself has been rent by
internal convulsions. These have been emphasized
in the work of Dr. F. C. S. Schiller, who has
shown that already in the days of Plato the dis-
tinction between ' truth ' and ' error ' was baffling
philosophy, that Plato's Theatetas has failed to
establish it, and that the famous dictum of Pro-
tagoras, 'Man is the measure of all things,'
distinctly foreshadows the * Pragmatic,' or, as he
calls it, the ' Humanist,' solution of the difficulty.
Elsewhere Dr. Schiller has commented on the
controversies raised by Hume's criticism of dogma-
tism. He has shown that Kant failed to answer
Hume because he accepted Hume's psychology,
and that no a priori philosophers have since been
able to devise any consistent and tenable doctrine.
The idealistic theories of the 'Absolute' reveal
their futility by their want of application to the
7
PRAGMATISM
genuine problems of life, and by the theoretic
agnosticism from which they cannot escape. Hence
the need for a new Theory of Knowledge and a
thorough reform of Logic.
4. At this point he joins forces with Mr. Alfred
Sidgwick, who has long been urging a radical
criticism of the procedures of Formal Logic, and
shown the gulf between them and the processes of
concrete thought. Sidgwick has demonstrated that
the belief in formal truth renders Logic merely
verbal, and that the actual meaning of assertions
completely escapes it.
5. The most sensational approach to Pragmatism,
however, is that from the side of religion. The
Pragmatic method of deciding religious problems,
which asserts the legitimacy of a ' Faith ' that
precedes knowledge, has always been, more or less
consciously, practised by the religious. It is
brilliantly advocated in the Thoughts of Pascal,
and clearly and forcibly defended in that most
remarkable essay in unprofessional philosophy,
Cardinal Newman's Grammar of Assent. This line
of reasoning, however, is most familiarly associated
with the name of William James; he first illus-
trated the Pragmatic Method by a famous paper
(for a theological audience) on The Will to Believe,
and founded the psychological study of religious
8
THE GENESIS OF PRAGMATISM
experience in his Gifford Lectures on The Varieties
of Religions Experience.
6. This brings us to the last, and historically
the most fertile, of the sources of Pragmatism,
Psychology. The publication in 1890 of James's
great Principles of Psychology opened a new era in
the history of that science. More than that, it was
destined in the long run to work a transformation in
philosophy as a whole, by introducing into it those
biological and voluntaristic principles to which he
afterwards applied the generic name of Pragmatism,
or philosophy of action. We must pass, then, to
consider the New Psychology of William James.
9
CHAPTEK II
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
Until the year 1890, when James's Principles were
published, the psychology of Hume reigned abso-
lutely in philosophy.* All empiricists accepted it
enthusiastically, as the sum of philosophic wisdom
;
all apriorists submitted to it, even in supplementing
and modifying it by ' transcendental ' and meta-
physical additions ; in either case it remained
uncontested as psychology, and, by propounding an
utterly erroneous analysis of the mind and its
experience, entangled philosophy in inextricable
difficulties.
Hume had, as philosophers commonly do, set
out from the practically sufficient analysis of
experience which all find ready-made in language.
He accepted, therefore, from common sense the belief
that physical reality is composed of a multitude of
separate existences that act on one another, and
* Not in Bradley's " Logic."
10
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
tried to conceive mental life strictly on the same
analogy. His theory of experience, therefore,
closely parallels the atomistic theory of matter.
Just as the physicist explains bodies as collections
of discrete particles, so Hume reduced all the con-
tents of the mind to a number of elementary sensa-
tions. Whether the mind was reflecting on its
own internal ideas, or whether it was undergoing
impressions which it supposed to come from an
external source, all that was really happening was
a succession of detached sensations. It seemed to
Hume indisputable that every distinct perception
(or ' impression ') was a distinct existence, and
that all 'ideas' were equally distinct, though
fainter, copies of impressions. Beyond impres-
sions and ideas it was unnecessary to look. Thus
to look at a chessboard was to have a number of
sensations of black and white arranged in a certain
order, to listen to a piece of music was to experi-
ence a succession of loud and soft auditory sensa-
tions, to handle a stone was to receive a group of
sensations of touch. To suppose that anything
beyond these sensory units was ever really experi-
enced was futile fiction. Experience was a mosaic,
of which the stones were the detached sensations,
and their washed-out copies, the ideas.
If this analysis of the mind were correct—and
ii
PEAGMATISM
its correctness was not disputed for more than a
hundred years, for were not the sensations admitted
to be the ultimate analysis of all that was per-
ceived?—the common-sense belief that knowledge
revealed a world outside the thinker was, of
course, erroneous. For common sense could hardly
treat ' things ' as merely * sensations ' artificially
grouped together in space, each 'thing' being a
complex of a number of sensations having relation
to similar complexes. It held rather that the
successive appearances of things were related in
time, in such a way that they could be supposed to
reveal a single object able to endure in spite of
surface changes, and to manifest the identity of its
sensory ' qualities.' Similarly, the succession of
ideas within the mind was for it supported by the
inward unity of the soul within which they arose.
Moreover, Hume's analysis made havoc of all idea
of ' causation.' If every sensation was a separate
being, how was it to be connected with any other
in any regular or necessary connection? Twoevents related as ' cause ' and ' effect ' must be a
myth.
These subversive consequences of his theory
Hume did not conceal, though he did not push his
mental ' atomism ' to its logical extreme. Whenhe defined material objects as ' coloured points
12
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
disposed in a certain order,' he was in fact admit-
ting space as a relating factor ; when he spoke of the
succession of impressions and ideas in experience,
he was tacitly assuming that what was apprehended
was not a bare succession of sensations, but also
the fact that they were succeeding one another,
and so allowing a sense of temporal relation. But
further than this he refused to go. The idea of a
continuous self was fantastic. There was nothing
beneath the ideas to connect them. The notion of
causal connection was equally chimerical. Each
sensation was distinct and existed in its own right.
It could therefore occur alone. There was nothing
to link together the distinct impressions. Hence
necessary connection in events could not be more
than a fiction of the mind based on expectation of
customary sequences ; how the mind he had de-
scribed as non-existent could form an expectation or
observe a sequence was calmly left a mystery.
Hume, then, seemed to leave to his successors in
philosophy a task of synthesis. He had tumbled
the soul off her high watch-tower, but how to
combine her shattered fragments again into a
working unity he declined to say. He saw the
sceptical implications of his analysis, but professed
himself unable to suggest a remedy.
He had, however, made the embarrassments of
13
PKAGMATISM
the theory of knowledge sufficiently clear for Kant,
his most important successor, to hit upon the most
obvious palliative, and in the Critique of Pure
Reason Kant set himself to patch up Hume's
analysis. Experience as it came through the
channels of sense, he admitted Hume had analysed
correctly ; it was * a manifold,' a whirl of separate
sensations. But these per se could not yield know-
ledge. They must be made to cohere, and the way
to do this he had found. The mind on to which
they fell was equipped with a complicated apparatus
of faculties which could organize the chaotic manifold
of sense and turn it into the connected world which
common sense and science recognize. First it views
the data of sense in the light of its own ' pure intui-
tions,' and, lo ! they are seen to be in Space and
Time ; then it solidifies them with its own * cate-
gories,' which turn them into ' substances ' and
* causes ' and endow them with all the attributes
required to sustain that status ; finally it refers
them all to a Transcendental Ego, which is not,
indeed, a soul, but sufficiently like one to provide
something that can admire the creative synthesis
of 'mind as such.'
Had Hume lived to read Kant's Critique, he
would probably have jeered at the vain complica-
tions of Kant's transcendental machinery, and
14
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
made it clear that between the primary manifold
of sensation and the first constructions of the
intellect there still yawns a gulf which Kant's
laboured explanations nowhere bridge.
Why does the chaotic ' matter ' of sensations
submit itself so tamely to the forming of the
mind ? How can the a priori necessities of
thought, which are the ' presuppositions ' of the
complexities Kant loved, operate upon so alien a
stuff as the sensations are assumed to be ? And,
after all, was not Kant a bit premature in proclaim-
ing the finality of his analysis and of his refutation
of empiricism for all time? The searching ques-
tion, Why should the future resemble the past?
had received no answer, and so might not the
mind itself, with all its categories, be susceptible to
change ? Was it certain that the miracle whereby
the data presented to our faculties conformed to
them would be a standing one? Had not Kant
himself as good as admitted that our faculties
might distort reality instead of making it in-
telligible ?
The truth is that at this point Kant is open to a
charge against which the assumptions he shared
with Hume admit of no defence. Hume had been
the first to discover that we are in the habit of
trying to rationalize our sense-data by putting
15
PRAGMATISM
ideal constructions upon them, though he had
abstained from sanctifying the practice by a hideous
jargon of technical terminology. But this way of
eking out the facts only seemed to him to falsify
them. Truth in his view was to be reached by
accepting with docility the sensations given from
without. To set to work to ' imagine ' connections
between them, and to claim for them a higher
truth, had seemed to him an outrage. What right,
then, had Kant to legitimate the mind's impudence
in tampering with sensations? Was not every
a priori form an 'imagination,' and a vain one
at that ?
To these objections the Kantian school have never
found an answer. They have simply repeated Kant's
phrases about the necessary ' presuppositions
'
which were to be added to Hume's data. The
English psychologists (the Mills, Bain, etc.) exhib-
ited a similar fidelity. They never accepted the
a priori, but relied on * the association of ideas
'
to build up a mind out of isolated sensations. But
was this expedient really thinkable? For if all
1 sensations ' or qualities are separate entities, how
can the addition of more ' distinct existences ' of
the same sort really bind them together? If in
1 the cat is upon the wall,' ' upon ' is a distinct
entity which has to relate 'cat' and 'wall,' what
16
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
is to connect ' cat ' with * upon ' and * upon
'
with ' wall ' ? The atomizing method carried to its
logical extreme demands that not only ' sensations
'
but also 'thoughts' should be essentially dis-
connected, and then, of course, no thinking can
cohere.
Psychology, then, had worked itself to a break-
down by accepting the * sensationalistic ' analysis
offered by Hume, and dragged philosophy with it.
Yet the escape was as easy as the egg of Columbus
to the insight of genius. William James had
merely to invert the problem. Instead of assuming
with Hume that because some experiences seemed
to attest the presence of distinct objects, all con-
nections were illusory and all experience must
ultimately consist of psychical atoms, James had
merely to maintain that this separation was secon-
dary and artificial, and that experience was initially
a continuum. Once this is pointed out, the fact is
obvious. The stream of experience no doubt con-
tains what it is afterwards possible to single out as
1 sensations,' but it presents them also as connected
by ' relations.' Moreover, the ' sensations ' or
' qualities ' and their ' relations ' exhibit the imme-
diate indiscerptible unity of a fluid rather than
a succession of flashes. Temporal and spatial
relations with all the connections they sustain are
17 2
PRAGMATISM
perceived just as directly as what we come to
distinguish as the ' things ' in them. ' Con-
sciousness,' James insists, 'does not appear to
itself chopped up in bits,' and 'we ought to say a
feeling of and, a feeling of if, a feeling of but, and
a feeling of by, quite as readily as we say a feeling
of blue or a feeling of cold. All things in experience
naturally * compenetrate,' to use a phrase of
Bergson's ; they are distinct and they are united at
the same time.
The great crux in Hume is thus seen to be
illusory. Immediate experience does not require
1 synthesis ' : it calls for ' analysis.' It is not a jig-
saw puzzle, to be pieced together without glue : it is
a confused whole which has to be divided and set
in order for clear thinking. Hume's mistake was
to have started from experience as partly analysed
by common sense, and not from the flux as given.
His 'sensations' were the qualities already
analysed out of the flux ; he took these selections
for the whole and neglected the other less obvious
features in it—viz., the relations which floated
them.
Thus the puzzle 'How do "relations" relate?'
received its solution in this new account of expe-
rience. Philosophers are puzzled by this question
because they confuse percepts with concepts. Per-
18
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
cepts are given in relation ; but concepts, being
ideal dissections of the perceptual flux, are dis-
continuous terms which have to be related by an
act of thought, because they were made for this
very purpose of distinction. Thus the eye sees
cats sitting upon walls, as parts of a rural land-
scape, and without the sharp distinctions which
exist between the concepts 'cat,' 'upon,' 'wall.'
These ideas were meant to disconnect ' the cat ' in
thought from the site it sat upon. Thought, then,
has made the ' atomism ' it professed to find. It
has only to unmake it, and to allow the distinctions
it held apart to merge again into the stream of
change.
All Hume's problems, therefore, are unreal, and
those of his apriorist critics are doubly removed
from reality. The whole conception of philosophy
as aiming at uniting disjointed data in a higher
synthesis runs counter to the real movement, which
aims at the analysis of a given whole. The real
question about causation is not how events can be
connected causally, but why are certain antecedents
preferred and dissected out and entitled ' causes.'
So the ' self ' is not one (undiscoverable) item
imagined to keep in order a host of other such
items. Any given moment of a consciousness is
just the mass of its ' sensations,' but these are
19
PKAGMATISM
consciously the heirs of its history and connected
with a past which is remembered. No Trans-
cendental Ego could do more to support the process
of experience than is achieved by 'a stream of
consciousness which carries its own past along.'
Here, then, is the straight way James desiderated,
a critical philosophy which goes, not 'through'
the complexities of Kantism, but leaves them on
one side as superfluous ' curios.'
But there remains an even more important
deduction from the new psychology. Hume had
been convicted of error in selecting those elements
of the flux which served his purpose and neglecting
the rest. But this mistake might reveal the
important fact that all analysis was a choice, and
inspired by volitions. A mind that analyses cannot
but be active in handling its experience. It manip-
ulates it to serve its ends. It emphasizes only
those portions of the flux which seem to it impor-
tant. In a better and fairer analysis than Hume's
these features will persist. It, too, would be a
product of selection, of a selection depending on
its maker's preferences. As James showed, the
distinction between 'dreams' and 'realities,'
between 'things' and 'illusions,' results only
from the differential values we attach to the parts
of the flux according as they „seem important or
20
THE NEW PSYCHOLOGY
interesting to us or not. The volitional contribution
is all-pervasive in our thinking. And once this
volitional interference with ' pure perception ' is
shown to be indispensable, it must be allowed to be
legitimate. Nor can this approval of our inter-
ference be restricted to selections. It must be
extended to additions. Just as we can select factors
from * the given ' to construct ' reality,' we can add
hypotheses to it to make it ' intelligible.' We can
claim the right of causal analysis, and assume that
our dissections have laid bare the inner springs of
the connection of events. Moreover, to the 'real
world ' which our choice has built out of the chaos
of 'appearances' we may hypothetically add1 infernal ' and ' heavenly ' regions.* Both are
transformations of 'the given' by the will, but,
like the postulate of causal series, experience may
confirm them. Kant's a priori activity of the mind
may thus in a sense supply an answer to Hume
—
but only in a voluntaristic philosophy which would
probably have seemed too bold both to him and to
Hume.
There can be no doubt that we do not approach
the data of perception in an attitude of quiescent
resignation. Our desires and needs equip us with
* This is the substance of the doctrine of 'The Will to
Believe.'
21
PRAGMATISM
assumptions and ' first principles,' which originate
from within, not from without. But how precisely
should this mental contribution to knowledge be
conceived ? In the last chapter of his Psychology
James suggested that the mind's organization is
essentially biological. It has evolved according to
sound Darwinian principles, and in so doing the
fittest of its ' variations ' have survived. But
were these variations quite fortuitous ? May they
not have been purposive responses to the stimula-
tion of environment? Can logic have been in-
vented like saws and ships for purposes of humanservice? These are some of the stimulating
questions which James's work in Psychology has
suggested.
22
CHAPTER III
WILL IN COGNITION
The new psychology of James was bound to produce
a new theory of knowledge, and though it did not
actually explore this problem, it contained several
valuable suggestions upon the subject. For in-
stance, in a brief passage discussing ' The Relations
of Belief and Will,' James pointed out that belief
is essentially an attitude of the will towards an
idea, adding that in order to acquire a belief ' we
need only in cold blood act as if the thing in ques-
tion were real, and keep acting as if it were real,
and it will infallibly end by growing into such a
connection with our life that it will become real
'
(ii., p. 321). This passage is an outline of the
doctrine of 'The Will to Believe,' which he was
afterwards to develop so forcibly.
Again, in his last chapter, James criticized the
doctrine of Spencer that all the principles of
thought, all its general truths and axioms, were
23
PRAGMATISM
derived from impressions of the external world.
He argued, on the other hand, that such ways
of looking at phenomena must originate in the
mind, and be prior to the experience which con-
firms them. Without digging further into the
character of this mental contribution to knowledge,
James contented himself with the suggestion that
the use of these axiomatic principles might be
construed in Darwinian style as a ' variation
'
surviving by its fitness, thus introducing into his
account of mental process the important idea that
thinking might be tested by its vital value.
What if knowledge be neither a dull submission
to dictation from without nor an unexplained
necessity of thought ? What if it be a bold adven-
ture, an experimental sally of a Will to live, to
know and to control reality ? What if its principles
were frankly risky, and their truth had to be desired
before it was tested and assured ? In a word, what
if first principles were to begin with postulates ?
Thus the way is paved from the new psychology to a
new theory of knowledge. A third alternative to
the banal dilemma of ' empiricism ' or ' apriorism
'
suggests itself.
The old empiricist view, as typified by Mill, was
that the mind had been impressed with all its
principles, such as the truths of arithmetic, the
24
WILL IN COGNITION
axioms of geometry, and the law of causation, by an
uncontradicted course of experience, until it gener-
alized facts into ' laws,' and was enabled to predict
a similar future with certainty. But this theory
had really been exploded in advance by Hume.
Facts do not appear as causally connected, nor, if
they did, would this guarantee that they will con-
tinue to do so in the future. The continuum of
experience, we may add, is not given as a series of
arithmetical units or geometrical equalities, unless
we deliberately measure it out in accordance with
mathematical principles. Empiricism thus gives
no real account of the scientific rational order of
the world.
But does it follow from the failure of empiricism
that apriorism is true? This has always been
assumed, and held to dispense rationalist philoso-
phers from giving any direct and positive proof
that these principles are a priori truths. But
manifestly their procedure is logically far from
cogent. If a third explanation can be thought of,
it will not follow that apriorism is true. All that
follows is that something has to be assumed before
experience proves it. What that something is, and
whence it comes, remains an open question. More-
over, apriorism has not escaped from the empirical
doubt about the future. Even granted that facts
25
PRAGMATISM
now conform to the necessities of our thoughts, whyshould they so comport themselves for ever ?
Let us, therefore, try a compromise, which
ignores neither that which we bring to experience
(like empiricism), nor that which we gain from
experience (like apriorism). This compromise is
effected by the doctrine of postulation. For though
a postulate proceeds from us, and is meant to guide
thought in anticipating facts, it yet allows the facts
to test and mould it ; so that its working modifies,
expands, or restricts its demands, and fits it to meet
the exigencies of experience, and permits, also, a
certain reinterpretation of the previous ' facts ' in
order to conform them to the postulate.
A postulate thus fully meets the demands of
apriorism. It is 'universal' in claim, because it
is convenient and economical to make a rule carry
as far as it will go ; and it is 'necessary,' because
all fresh facts are on principle subjected to it, in
the hope that they will support and illustrate it.
Yet a postulate can never be accused of being a
mere sophistication, or a bar to the progress of
knowledge, because it is always willing to submit
to verification in the course of fresh experience,
and can always be reconstructed or abandoned,
should it cease to edify. A long and successful
course of service raises a postulate to the dignity of
26
WILL IN COGNITION
an ' axiom'—i.e., a principle which it is incredible
anyone should think worth disputing—whereas
repeated failure in application degrades it to the
position of a prejudice— i.e., an a priori opinion
which is always belied by its consequences.
A postulate ' thus differs essentially from the
1 a priori truth ' by its dependence upon the will,
by its being the product of a free choice. We have
always to select the assumptions upon which we
mean to act in our commerce with reality. We
select the rules upon which we go, and we select
the 'facts ' by which we claim to support our rules,
stripping them of all the ' irrelevant1
details involved
by their position in the flux of happenings. Thus
we emphasize that side of things which fits in
with our expectations, until the facts are ' faked
'
sufficiently to figure as 'cases' of our 'law/
Postulation and the verifying of postulates is thus
a process of reciprocal discrimination and selection.
The postulate once formulated, we seek in the flux
for confirmations of it, and thus construct a system
of ' facts ' which are relative to it ; that is how the
postulate reacts upon experience. If, on the other
hand, this process of selection is unfruitful, and the
confirmations of our rule turn out infinitesimal, we
alter the rule ; and thus the ' facts 'in the case
reject the postulate.
27
PEAGMATISM
This continuous process of selection and rejection
of 'principles' and 'facts1
has, as we have said,
a thoroughly biological tinge. The fitness of a
postulate to survive is being continually tested. It
springs in the first place from a human hope that
events may be systematized in a certain way, and
it endures so long as it enables men to deal with
them in that way. If it fails, the formation of fresh
ideals and fresh hypotheses is demanded ; but that
which causes one postulate to prevail over another
is always the satisfaction which, if successful, it
promises to some need or desire. Thus * thought
'
is everywhere inspired by 'will.1
It is an instru-
ment, the most potent man has found, whereby he
brings about a harmony with his environment.
This harmony is always something of a compro-
mise. We postulate conformity between Nature
and one of our ideals. We usually desire more
than we can get, but insist on all that Nature can
concede.
Causation serves as a good example. Experience
as it first comes to us is a mere flood of happen-
ings, with no distinction between causal and casual
sequences. Clearly our whole ability to control our
life, or even to continue it, demands that we should
predict what happens, and guide our actions accord-
ingly. We therefore postulate a right to dissect
28 '
WILL IN COGNITION
the flux, to fit together selected series without
reference to the rest. Thus, a systematic network
of natural Maws' is slowly knit together, and
chaos visibly transforms itself into scientific order.
The postulation of ' causes ' is verified by its
success. Moreover, it is to be noted that to this
postulate there is no alternative. A belief that all
events are casual would be scientifically worthless.
So is a doctrine (still popular among philosophers)
that the only true ' cause ' is the total universe at
one moment, the only true * effect,1
the whole of
reality at the next. For that is merely to reinstate
the given chaos science tried to analyse, and to
forbid us to make selections from it. It would
make prediction wholly vain, and entangle truth in
a totality of things which is unique at every instant,
and never can recur.
The principles of mathematics are as clearly
postulates. In Euclidean geometry we assume
definitions of ' points,' 'lines,' 'surfaces,' etc.,
which are never found in nature, but form the most
convenient abstractions for measuring things. Both
'space' and 'time,' as defined for mathematical
purposes, are ideal constructions drawn from
empirical ' space ' (extension) and ' time ' (suc-
cession) feelings, and purged of the subjective
variations of these experiences. Nevertheless,
29
PRAGMATISM
geometry forms the handiest system for applying
to experience and calculating shapes and motions.
But, ideally, other systems might be used. The1 metageometries ' have constructed other ideal
1 spaces ' out of postulates differing from Euclid's,
though when applied to real space their greater
complexity destroys their value. The postulatory
character of the arithmetical unit is quite as clear
;
for, in application, we always have to agree as to
what is to count as ' one ' ; if we agree to count
apples, and count the two halves of an apple as
each equalling one, we are said to be ' wrong,1
though, if we were dividing the apple among two
applicants, it would be quite right to treat each half
as ' one ' share. Again, though one penny added
to another makes two, one drop of water added to
another makes one, or a dozen, according as it
is dropped. Common sense, therefore, admits that
we may reckon variously, and that arithmetic does
not apply to all things.
Again, it is impossible to concede any meaning
even to the central * law of thought ' itself—the
Law of Identity (' A is A ')—except as a postulate.
Outside of Formal Logic and lunatic asylums no
one wishes to assert that ' A is A.1
All significant
assertion takes the form ' A is B.1
But A and B
are (liferent, and, indeed, no two *AV are ever
30
WILL IN COGNITION
quite the same. Hence, when we assert either the
'identity' of 'A 1
in two contexts, or that of 'A' and
'B,' in 'A is B/ we are clearly ignoring differences
which really exist—i.e., we postulate that in spite of
these differences A and B will for our purposes
behave as if they were one ('identical1
). And we
should realize that this postulate is of our making,
and involves a risk. It may be that experience
refuses to confirm it, and convicts us instead of
a ' mistaken identity.' In short, every identity we
reason from is made by our postulating an irrelevance
of differences.
There is thus, perhaps, no fundamental procedure
of thought in which we cannot trace some deliber-
ately adopted attitude. We distinguish between1 ourselves ' and the ' external ' world, perhaps
because we have more control over our thoughts and
limbs, and less, or none, over sticks and stones and
mountains ; fundamental as it is, it is a distinction
ivithin experience, and is not given ready-made, but
elaborated in the course of our dealings with
it. Similarly, in accordance with its varying
degrees of vividness, continuity, and value, experi-
ence itself gets sorted into ' realities,' dreams,'
and 'hallucinations.' In short, when the pro-
cesses of discriminating between 'dreams' and
'reality' are considered, all these distinctions
3i
PRAGMATISM
will ultimately be found to be judgments of
value.
Nor is it only in the realm of scientific knowing
that postulation reveals itself as a practicable and
successful method of anticipating experience and
consolidating fact. The same method has always
been employed by man in reaching out towards the
final syntheses which (in imagination) complete
his vision of reality. The ' truths ' of all religions
originate in postulates. ' Gods ' and ' devils,'
* heavens ' and * hells,' are essentially demands
for a moral order in experience which transcend
the given. The value of the actual world is supple-
mented and enhanced by being conceived as pro-
jected and continued into a greater, and our
postulates are verified by the salutary influence
they exercise on our earthly life. Both postulation
and verification, then, are applicable to the problems
of religion as of science. This is the meaning of
the Will to Believe. When James first defined and
defended it, it provoked abundant protest, on the
ground that it allowed everyone to believe whatever
he pleased and to call it 'true.' The critics had
simply failed to see that verification by experience
is just as integral a part of voluntaristic procedure
as experimental postulation, and that James him-
self had from the first asserted this. Indeed, thatn
32
WILL IN COGNITION
he had first given a theological illustration of the
function of volition in knowing was merely an
accident. But that the will to believe was capable
of being generalized into a voluntarist theory of all
knowledge was soon shown in Dr. Schiller's Axioms
as Postulates.
33
CHAPTER IV
THE DILEMMAS OF DOGMATISM
Every man, probably, is by instinct a dogmatist.
He feels perfectly sure that he knows some things,
and is right about them against the world. What-
ever he believes in he does not doubt, but holds to
be self-evidently or indisputably true. His naive
dogmatism, moreover, spontaneously assumes that
his truth is universal and shared by all others.
If now he could live like a fakir, wholly wrapped
in a cloud of his own imaginings, and nothing ever
happened to disappoint his expectations, to jar
upon his prejudices, and to convict him of error ; if
he never held converse with anyone who took a
different view and controverted him, his dogmatism
would be lifelong and incurable. But as he lives
socially, he has in practice to outgrow it, and this
lands him in a serious theoretical dilemma. Hehas to learn to live with others who differ from
him in their dogmatizing. Social life plainly would
34
THE DILEMMAS OF DOGMATISM
become impossible if all rigidly insisted on the
absolute Tightness of their own beliefs and the
absolute wrongness of all others.
So compromises have to be made to get at a
common ' truth.' It must be recognized that not
everything which is believed to be ' knowledge ' is
knowledge. In fact, it is safer to assume that none
have knowledge, though all think they have ; to say
in fact, men only have ' opinions,' which may be
nearer to or farther from ' the truth,' but are not
of necessity as unquestionable as they seem to be.
Out of this concession to the social life arise three
problems. How are ' opinions ' to be compared
with each other, and how is the extent of their
1 truth ' or ' error ' to be determined ? How is the
belief in absolute truth to be interpreted and dis-
counted ? How is the penitent dogmatist, once he
has allowed doubt to corrupt his self-confidence, to be
stopped from doubting all things and turning sceptic?
As regards the first problem, the first question is
whether we shall try to test opinions and to arrive
at a standard of value by which to measure them
by comparing the opinions themselves with one
another, or shall presume that there must be some
absolute standard which alone is truly true, whether
we are aware of it or not. The former view is rela-
tivism, the latter is absolutism, in the matter of truth.
35
PEAGMATISM
Now, there can be no doubt that absolutism is
more congenial to our natural prejudices. Accord-
ingly it is the method tried first ; but it soon
conducts dogmatism to an awkward series of
dilemmas.
1. If there is absolute truth, who has it? and
who can use the absolute criterion of opinions it is
supposed to form? Not, surely, everyone who
thinks he has. It will never do to let every
dogmatist vote for himself and condemn all others.
That way war and madness lie. Until there is
absolute agreement, there cannot be absolute
truth.
2. But absolute truth may still be reverenced
as an ideal, to save us from the scepticism to which
a complete relativity of truth would lead. But
would it save us? If it is admitted that no one
can arrogate to himself its possession, what use is
it to believe that it is an ideal ? For if no one can
assume that he has it, all human truth is, in fact,
such as the relativist asserted, and scepticism is
just as inevitable as before. It makes no difference
to the sceptical inference whether there is no
absolute truth, or whether it is unattained by man,
and human unattainable.
3. It was a mistake, therefore, to admit that
opinions cannot be compared together. Some are
36
THE DILEMMAS OF DOGMATISM
much more certain than others, and, indeed, ' self-
evident' and 'intuitive.' Let us therefore take
these to be 'truer.' If so, the thinker who feels
most certain he is right is most likely to be right.
4. This suggestion will be welcomed by all dog-
matists—until they discover that it does not help
them to agree together, because they are all as
certain as can be. But a critically-minded man
will urge against it that ' certainty ' is a subjective
and psychological criterion, and that no one has
been able to devise a method for distinguishing the
alleged logical from the undeniable psychological
certainty. He will hesitate to say, therefore, that
because a belief seems certain it is true, and to trust
the formal claim to infallibility which is made in
every judgment. And when ' intuitions ' are appealed
to, he will ask how ' true ' intuitions are to be dis-
criminated from ' false,' sound from insane, and in-
quire to what he is committing himself in admitting
the truth of intuitions. He will demand, therefore,
the publication of a list of the intuitions which are
absolutely true. But he will not get it, and if he
did, it may be predicted that he would not find a
single one which has not been disputed by some
eminent philosopher.
5. Intuitions, therefore, are an embarrassment,
rather than a help to Intellectualism. It has to
37
PRAGMATISM
maintain both that intuitions are the foundations
of all truth and certitude, and also that not all are
true. But our natural curiosity as to how these
sorts are to be known apart is left unsatisfied. Wemust not ask which are true, and which not. No
one can say in advance about what matters intuitive
certainty is possible ; what is, or is not, an intuition
is revealed only to reflection after the event. Only
if an intuition has played us false, we may be sure
it was not infallible ; it must either have been one
of the fallible sort, or else no intuition at all.
6. At this point universal scepticism begins to
raise its hydra head, and to grin at the dogmatist's
discomfiture. For in point of fact the history
of thought reveals, not a steady accumulation
of indubitable truth, but a continuous strife of
opinions, in which the most widely accepted beliefs
daily succumb to fresh criticism and fall into
disrepute as the * errors of the past.' Nothing, it
seems, can guarantee a ' truth,' however firmly it
may be believed for a time, from the corrosive
force of new speculation and changed opinion ; to
survey the field of philosophic dispute, strewn with
the remains of ' infallible ' systems and 'absolute'
certainties, is to be led irresistibly to a sceptical
doubt as to the competence of human thought. If
' absolute truth ' is our ideal and acquaintance
38 -
THE DILEMMAS OF DOGMATISM
with ' absolute reality ' our aim, then, in view of
the persistent illusions on both these points to
which the human mind is liable, it seems necessary
to recognize the hopelessness of our search. Thus
the last dilemma of dogmatism is reached. In
view of the diversity of human beliefs and the
discredit which has historically fallen on the most
axiomatic articles of faith, we must either admit
scepticism to be the issue of the debate, or else,
condemning our absolute view of truth, find some
means of utilizing the relative truths which are all
that humanity seems able to grasp. But to come to
terms with relativism is to renounce the dogmatic
attitude entirely, and to approach the problems of
philosophy in a totally different spirit.
39
CHAPTER V
THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND ERROR
It has been shown in the last chapter how urgent
has become the problem of discriminating between
the true and false among relative ' truths.' For
absolute truth has become a chimera, self-evidence
an illusion, and intuition untrustworthy. All three
are psychologically very real to those who believe
in them, but logically they succumb to the assaults
of a scepticism which infers from the fact that no1 truths ' are absolute that all may reasonably be
overthrown.
The only obstacle to its triumph lies in the
existence of 'relative' truths which are not absolute,
and do not claim to be, and in the unexamined
possibility that in a relativist interpretation of all
truth a meaning may be found for the distinction
between true ' and ' false.1
Now, not even a
sceptic could deny that the size of an object is
better measured by a yard-measure than by the eye,
4°
THE PEOBLEM OF TRUTH AND ERROR
even though it may be meaningless to ask what its
size may be absolutely ; or that it is probable that
bread will be found more nourishing than stone,
even though it may not be a perfect elixir of life.
Even if he denied this, the sceptic's acts would
convict his ivords of insincerity, and practically, at
any rate, no one has been or can be a sceptic, what-
ever the extent of his theoretic doubts.
This fact is construed by the pragmatist as a
significant indication of the way out of the epistem-
ological impasse. The 'relative1
truths, which
Intellectualism passed by with contempt, may differ
in practical value and lead to the conceptions of
practical truth and certainty which may be better
adapted to the requirements of human life than the
elusive and discredited ideals of absolute truth and
certainty, and may enable us to justify the distinc-
tions we make between the ' true ' and the * false.
At any rate, this suggestion seems worth follow-
ing up.
To begin with, we must radically disabuse our
minds of the idea that thinking starts from certainty.
Even the self-evident and self-confident 'intuitions'
that impress the uncritical so much with their claim
to infallibility are really the results of antecedent
doubts and ponderings, and would never be enun-
ciated unless there were thought to be a dispute
4i
PBAGMATISM
about them. In real life thought starts from per-
plexities, from situations in which, as Professor
Dewey says, beliefs have to be ' reconstructed,' and it
aims at setting doubts at rest. It is psychologically
impossible for a rational mind to assert what it
knows to be true, and supposes everyone else
to admit the truth of. This is why even a
philosopher's conversation does not consist of a
rehearsal of all the unchallenged truisms that he
can remember.
Being thus conditioned by a doubt, every judg-
ment is a challenge. It claims truth, and backs its
claims by the authority of its maker ; but it would
be folly to imagine that it thereby becomes ipso
facto true, or is meant to be universally accepted
without testing. Its maker must know this as well
as anyone, unless his dogmatism has quite blotted
out his common sense. Indeed, he may himself
have given preference to the judgment he made
over the alternatives that occurred to him only
after much debate and hesitation, and may pro-
pound it only as a basis for further discussion and
testing.
Initially, then, every judgment is a truth-claim,
and this claim is merely formal. It does not mean
that the claim is absolutely true, and that it is
impious to question it. On the contrary, it has
42
THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND ERROR
still to be validated by others, and may work in
such a way that its own maker withdraws it, and
corrects it by a better. The intellectualist accounts
of truth have all failed to make this vital distinction
between ' truth-claim ' and validated truth. They
rest on a confusion offormal tvith absolute truth, and
it is on this account that they cannot distinguish
between ' truth1 and error. For false judgments
also formally claim ' truth; No judgment alleges
that it is false.*
On the other hand, if the distinction between
truth-claims and validated truths is made, there
ceases to be any theoretic difficulty about the con-
ception and correction of errors, however difficult it
may be to detect them in practice. ' Truths 'will
be 'claims' which have worked well and main-
tained themselves; 'errors,' such as have been
superseded by better ones. All ' truths 'must be
tested by something more objective than their own
self-assertiveness, and this testing by their working
and the consequences to which they lead may go
on indefinitely. In other words, however much a
' truth ' has been validated, it is always possible
to test it further. I.e., it is never theoretically
'absolute,' however well it may practically be
* Not even ' I lie,' which is meaningless as it stands. Cf.
Dr. Schiller's Formal Logic, p. 373.
43
PEAGMATISM
assured. For a confirmation of this doctrine
Pragmatism appeals to the history of scientific
truth, which has shown a continuous correction of
* truths,1
which were re-valued as errors,' as better
statements for them became available.
It may also be confirmed negatively by the break-
down of the current definitions of truth, which all
seem in the end to mean nothing.
The oldest and commonest definition of a * truth
which is given is that it is * the correspondence of
a thought to reality.' But Intellectualism never
perceived the difficulties lurking in it. At first
sight this seems a brave attempt to get outside the
circle of thought in order to test its value and to
control its vagaries. Unluckily, this theory can
only assert, and neither explains nor proves, the
connection between the thought and the reality it
desiderates. For, granting that it is the intent of
every thought to correspond with reality, we must
yet inquire how the alleged correspondence is to be
made out. Made out it must be ; for as the criterion
is quite formal and holds of all assertions, the claim
to ' correspond ' may be false. To prove the
correspondence, then, the ' reality ' would have
somehow to be known apart from the truth -claim of
the thought, in order that the two might be com-
pared and found to agree. But if the reality were
44
THE PEOBLEM OF TEUTH AND EEEOE
already known directly, what would be the need
of as serting an idea of it and claiming * truth ' for
this ? How, moreover, could the claim be tested, if,
as is admitted, the reality is not directly known?
To assert the * correspondence ' must become a
groundless postulate about something which is
defined to transcend all knowledge. The corre-
spondence theory, then, does not test the truth-claim
of the assertion ; it only gives a fresh definition of
it. A ' true ' thought, it says, is one which claims
to correspond with a 'reality.' But so does a false,
and hence the theory leaves us as we were, puzzled
to distinguish them.*
Yet the theory is not wholly wrong. Many of
our thoughts do claim to correspond with reality in
ways that can be verified. If the judgment ' There
is a green carpet in my hall' is taken to mean
'If I enter my hall, I shall see a green carpet,'
* This same difficulty reappears in various forms, as
e.g., in a recent theory which makes the truth of a
judgment lie in its asserting a relation between different
objects, and not in the existence of those objects themselves.
This formula also applies as evidently to false judgments as
to true. It, too, brings no independent evidence of the exis-
tence of the objects referred to, and might fall into error
through asserting a relation between objects which did not
exist. It is, moreover, incapable of showing that a relation
corresponding to the idea we have of it really exists when we
judge that it does.
45
PRAGMATISM
perception tests whether the judgment ' corre-
sponds ' with the reality perceived, and so goes to
validate or disprove the claim. But the limits
within which this correspondence works are very
strait. It applies only to such judgments as are
anticipations of perception,* and will test a truth -
claim only where there is willingness to act on it.
It implies an experiment, and is not a wholly intel-
lectual process.
The superiority of the * correspondence ' theory
over the belief in ' intuitions ' lies in its insis-
tence that thought is not to audit its own accounts.
Its success or failure depends upon factors external
to it, which establish the truth or falsehood of
its claims. No such guarantee is offered by the
next theory, which is known as the * consistence'
or ' coherence ' theory. In order to avoid the
difficulty which wrecked the ' correspondence
'
theory, that of making the truth of an assertion
reside in an inexperienceable relation to an un-
attainable reality, this view maintains that an
idea is true if it is consistent with the rest of our
thoughts, and so can be fitted with them into a
coherent system. No doubt a coherence among
our ideas is a convenience and a part of their
* Each perception, however, contains much that is supplied
by the mind, not ' given ' to it.
46
THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND ERROR
1 working," but it is hardly a test of their objective
truth. For a harmonious system of thoughts is
conceivable which would either not apply to reality
at all, or, if applied, would completely fail. On this
theory systematic delusions, fictions, and dreams,
might properly lay claim to truth. True, they
might not be quite consistent: but neither are the
systems of our sciences. If, then, this absolute co-
herence be insisted on, this test condemns our whole
knowledge ; if not, it remains formal, and fails to
recognize any distinctions of value in the claims
which can be systematized.
To avoid this reductio ad absiirdum, it has been
suggested that it is not the coherence of the idea in
human, finite, minds which constitutes ' truth,' but
the perfect consistency of the experience of an
Absolute Mind. The test, then, of our limited
coherency will lie in its relation to this Absolute
System. But here we have the correspondence
doctrine once again in a fresh disguise ; our human
systems are now ' true ' if they correspond with
the Absolute's. But as there is no way for us of
sharing the Absolute Experience, our test is again
illusory, and productive of a depressing scepticism ;
and, again, we have only asserted that truth is what
claims to be part of the Absolute System.
A word may be devoted to the simple refusal of
47
PEAGMATISM
intuitionists to give an account of Truth on the
ground that it is ' indefinable.' Truth is taken to
be an ultimate unanalyzable quality of certain
propositions, intuitively felt, and incapable of descrip-
tion. Error, by the same token, should be equally
indefinable and as immediately apprehended. How,
then, can there be differences of opinion, and mis-
takes as to what is true and what false ? How is it
that a proposition which is felt to be ' true ' so often
turns out to be erroneous ? If all errors are felt to
be true by those they deceive, is it not clear that
immediate feeling is not a good enough test of a
validated truth? Thus, once again, we find that
an account of truth-claim is being foisted on us in
place of a description of truth-testing.
The intellectualist, then, being in every case
unable to justify the vital distinction commonly
made between the true and the false, we return to
the pragmatist. He starts with no preconceptions
as to what truth must mean, whether it exists or
not ; he is content to watch how de facto claims to
truth get themselves validated in experience. He
observes that every question is intimately related
to some scheme of human purposes. For it has to
be put, in order to come into being. Hence every
inquiry arises, and every question is asked, because
of obstacles and problems which arise in the carry-
48
THE PEOBLEM OF TEUTH AND EEEOE
ing out of human purposes. So soon as uncertainty
arises in the course of fulfilling a purpose, an idea
or belief is formulated and acted on, to fill the gap
where immediate certitude has broken down. This
engenders the truth-claim, which is necessarily a1 good ' in its maker's eyes, because it has been
selected by him and judged preferable to any alter-
native that occurred to him.
How, then, is it tested? Simply by the con-
sequences which follow from adopting it and using
it as an assumption upon which to work. If these.
consequences are satisfactory, if they promote the
purpose in hand, instead of thwarting it, and thus
have a valuable_eifesi~uftQn life, then the truth-
claim maintains its ' truth,' and is so far validated.
This is the universal method of testing assertions
alike in the formation of mathematical laws, physical
hypotheses, religious beliefs, and ethical postulates.
Hence such pragmatic aphorisms as 'truth is
useful ' or ' truth is a matter of practical con-
sequences ' mean essentially that all assertions
must be tested by being applied to a real problem of
knowing. What is signified by such statements is
that no ' truth ' must be accepted merely on
account of the insistence of its claim, but that
every idea must be tested by the consequences of
its working. Its truth will then depend upon those
49 4
PBAGMATISM
consequences being fruitful for life in general, and
in particular for the purpose behind the particular
inquiry in which it arose. Truth is a value and a
satisfaction ; but ' intellectual satisfaction ' is not
a morbid delight in dialectical and verbal juggling :
it is the satisfaction which rewards the hard labour
of rationalizing experience and rendering it more
conformable with human desires.
It should be clear, though it is often mis-
understood, that there is nothing arbitrary or
* subjective ' in this method of testing beliefs. It
does not mean that we are free to assert the truth
of every idea which seems to us pretty or pleasant.
The very term ' useful ' was chosen by pragmatists
as a protest against the common philosophic licence
of alleging ' truths ' which could never be applied
or tested, and were supposed to be none the worse
for being * useless.' It is clear both that such1 truths ' must be a monopoly of Intellectualism,
and also that they do allow every man to believe
whatever he wishes, provided only that he boldly
claims ' self-evidence ' for his idiosyncrasy. In this
purely subjective sense, into which Intellectualism
is driven, it is, however, clear that there can be no
useless ideas. For any idea anyone decided to
adopt, because it pleased or amused him, would be
ipso facto true. Pragmatism, therefore, by refuting
\5°
THE PEOBLEM OF TEUTH AND EEEOE
' useless ' knowledge, shows that it does not admit
such merely subjective ' uses.' It insists that
ideas must be more objectively useful—viz., by
showing ability to cope with the situation they
were devised to meet. If they fail to harmonize
with the situation they are untrue, however attrac-
tive they may be. For ideas do not function in a
void; they have to work in a world of fact, and
to adapt themselves to all facts, though they may
succeed in transforming them in the end.
Nor has an idea to reckon only with facts : it has
also to cohere with other ideas. It must be con-
gruous with the mass of other beliefs held for good
reasons by the thinker who accepts it. For no one
can afford to have a stock of beliefs which conflict too
violently with those of his fellows. If his ' intui-
tions ' contrast too seriously with those of others,
and he acts on them, he will be shut up as a
lunatic. If, then, the ' useful ' idea has to approve
itself both to its maker and his fellows without
developing limitations in its use, it is clear that a
pragmatic truth is really far less arbitrary and
subjective than the ' truths ' accepted as absolute,
on the bare ground that they seem * self-evident
'
to a few intellectualists.
If, however, it be urged that pragmatic truths
never grow absolutely true at all, and that the most
5*
PRAGMATISM
prolonged pragmatic tests do not exclude the possi-
bility of an ultimate error in the idea, there is no
difficulty about admitting this. The pragmatic
test yields practical, and not ' absolute,' certainty.
The existence of absolute certainty is denied, and
the demand for it, in a world which contains only
the practical sort, merely plays into the hands of
scepticism. The uncertainty of all our verificatory
processes, however, is not the creation of the
pragmatist, nor is he a god to abolish it. Abstractly,
there is always a doubt about what transcends our
immediate experience, and this is why it is so
healthy to have to repudiate so many theoretic
doubts in every act we do. For beliefs have to be
acted on, and the results of the action rightly react
on the beliefs. The pragmatic test is practically
adequate, and is the only one available. That it
brings out the risk of action only brings out its
superiority to a theory which cannot get started at
all until it is supplied with absolute certainty, and
meantime can only idly rail at all existing human
truths.
We have in all this consistently referred the truth
of ideas to individual experiences for verification.
This evidently makes all truths in some sense
dependent upon the personality of those who assert
and accept them. Intellect ualist logic, on the
52
THE PROBLEM OF TRUTH AND ERROR
other hand, has always proclaimed that mental
processes, if true, are ' independent ' of the idio-
syncrasies of particular minds. Ideas have a fixed
meaning, and cohere in bodies of ' universal
'
truth, quite irrespective of whether any particular
mind harbours them or not. This is not only a
contention fatal to the pragmatic claims, but also
bound up with other assumptions of Formal Logic.
So it becomes necessary to inquire whether this
Logic is a success, and so can coherently abstract
from the personality of the knower and the par-
ticular situations that incite him to know.
53
CHAPTER VI
THE FAILURE OF FOPvMAL LOGIC
In order to escape the necessity of concerning itself
with personality and particular circumstances in
questions of truth and error, Intellectualism appeals
to Logic, which it conceives as a purely formal
science and its impregnable citadel. This appeal,
however, rests on a number of questionable assump-
tions, and most of these are not avowed.
1. It assumes that forms of thought can be
treated in abstraction from their matter—in other
words, that the general types of thinking are never
affected by the particular context in which they
occur. Now, this means that the question of real
truth must not be raised ; for, as we have seen
(Chapter V.), real truth is always an affair of
particular consequences. The result is, that as
truth-claims are no longer tested, they all pass as
true for Logic, and are even raised to the rank of
1 absolute truths,' or are mistaken for them. For
54
. THE FAILURE OF FOEMAL LOGIC
the notion of a really ('materially') true judg-
ment which someone has chosen, made, and tested,
there is substituted that of a formally valid pro-
position, and in the end Logic gets so involved in
the study of ' validity ' that it puts aside altogether
all real tests of truth, and becomes a game with
verbal symbols which is entirely irrelevant to
scientific thinking.
2. Formal Logic assumes the right of abstracting
from the whole process of making an assertion. It
presumes that the assertion has already been made
somehow. How, it does not inquire. Yet it is
clear that in each case there were concrete reasons
why just that assertion was preferred to any other.
These concrete reasons it makes bold to dismiss as
'psychological,' and between 'logic' and 'psy-
chology'* it decrees an absolute divorce. Where,
when, why, by and to whom, an assertion was
made, is taken to be irrelevant, and put aside as
1 extralogical.'
3. This convenient assumption, however, ulti-
mately necessitates an abstraction from meaning,
though Formal Logic does not avow this openly.
Every assertion is meant to convey a certain meaning
in a certain context, and therefore its verbal ' form
'
* The descriptive science of thought, in its concrete
actuality in different minds.
55
PRAGMATISM
has to take on its own individual nuance of meaning.
What any particular form of words does in fact
mean on any particular occasion always depends
upon the use of the words in a particular context.
Meaning, therefore, cannot be depersonalized ; if
meanings are depersonalized, they cease to be real,
and become verbal.
Formal Logic has, in fact, mistaken words, which
are (within the same language) identical on all
occasions, for the thoughts they are intended to
express, which are varied to suit each occasion.
Words alone are tolerant of the abstract treatment
Formal Logic demands. This ' science,' therefore,
finally reduces to mere verbalism, distracted by
inconsistent relapses into ' psychology.'
But will this conception of Logic either work out
consistently in itself or lead to a tenable theory of
scientific thinking? Emphatically not. What is
the use of a logic which (1) cannot effect the capital
distinction of all thought, that between the true
and the false ? (2) is debarred by its own principles
from considering the meaning of any real assertion ?
and (3) is thus tossed helplessly from horn to horn
of the dilemma ' either verbalism or psychology ' ?
We may select a few examples of this fatal
dilemma.
1. In dealing with what it calls ' the meaning ' of
56
THE FAILURE OF FORMAL LOGIC
terms, propositions, etc., Formal Logic has always
to choose between the meaning of the words and
the meaning of the man. For it is clear that words
which may be used ambiguously may on occasion
leave no doubt as to their meaning, while conversely
all may become ' ambiguous ' in a context. If, there-
fore, the occasion is abstracted from, all forms must
be treated verbally as ambiguous formulae, which maybe used in different senses. If it is, nevertheless,
attempted to deal with their actual meaning on
any given occasion, what its maker meant the
words to convey must be discovered, and the inquiry
at once becomes ' psychological '—that is to say,
'extralogical.'
2. If judgments are not to be verbal ('pro-
positions'), but real assertions which are actually
meant, they must proceed from personal selections,
and must have been chosen from among alternative
formulations because of their superior value for
their maker's purpose. But all this is plainly an
affair of psychology. So inevitable is this that a
truly formal Ideal of ' Logic ' would exclude all
judgment whatever from the complete system of
' eternal ' Truth. For from such a system no part
could be rightly extracted to stand alone. Such a
selection could be effected and justified only by the
exigencies of a human thinker.
57
PBAGMATISM
The impotent verbalism of the formal treatment
of judgment appears in another way when the
question is raised how a ' true ' judgment is to be
distinguished from a 'false.' For the logician,
if his public will not accept either the relegation of
this distinction to ' psychology ' or the proper
formal answer that all judgments are (formally)
' true ' and even ' infallible,' can think of nothing
better to say than that if the ' judgment ' is not true
it was not a ' true judgment,' but a false ' opinion
'
which may be abandoned to ' psychology.'* Appar-
ently he is not concerned to help men to dis-
criminate between ' judgments ' and ' opinions,' or
even to show that true 'judgments ' do in fact occur.
3. Inference involves Formal Logic in a host of
difficulties.
(a) If it is not to be a verbal manipulation of
phrases whose coming together is not inquired into,
it must be a connected train of thought. But such
a connection of thoughts cannot be conceived or
understood without reference to the purpose of a
reasoner, who selects what he requires from the
totality of ' truths.' If, then, ' Logic ' has merely
* The most popular contribution which Oxford makes just
now to the theory of Error is, ' A judgment which is erroneous
is not really a judgment.' So when a professor ' judges ' he is
infallible—by definition !
58
THE FAILUEE OF FORMAL LOGIC
to contemplate this eternal and immutable system
of truth in its integrity, and forbids all selection
from it for a merely human purpose, how can it
either justify, or even understand, the drawing of
any inference whatever ?
(h) Formal Logic clearly will not quail before the
charge of uselessness. But on its own principles
it ought to be consistent. But by this test also,
when it is rigorously judged by it, it fails com-
pletely. Its inconsistencies are many and incurable.
It cannot even be consistent in its theory of the
simplest fundamentals. It is found upon some
occasions to define judgment as that which may be
either true or false, and upon others as that which
is ' true ' (formally)
—
i.e., it cannot decide whether
or not to ignore the existence of error.
(c) The Formal view of inference regards it as a
'paradox.' An inference is required on the one hand
to supply fresh information, and on the other to
follow rigorously from its premisses ; it must, in a
word, exhibit both novelty and necessity. It would
seem, however, that if our inference genuinely had
imparted new knowledge, the event must be merely
psychological ; for how can any process or event
perturb, or add to, the completed totality of truth in
itself? On the other hand, if the 'necessity' of
the operation be taken seriously, the inference
'
59
PKAGMATISM
becomes illusory ; for if the conclusion inferred is
already contained in the premisses, what sense is
there in the purely verbal process of drawing it
out?
{d) Most glaringly inadequate of all, however, is
the Formal doctrine of * Proof ' contained in its
theory of the Syllogism. A Formal or verbal syllo-
gism depends essentially on the ability of its Middle
Term to connect the terms in its conclusion. If,
however, the Middle Term has not the same meaning
in the two premisses, the syllogism breaks in two,
and no ' valid ' conclusion can be reached. Now,
whether in fact any particular Middle Term bears
the same meaning in any actual reasoning Formal
Logic has debarred itself from inquiring, by deciding
that actual meaning was 'psychological.' It has
to be content, therefore, with an identity in the
word employed for its Middle. But this evidence
may always fail ; for when two premisses which are
(in general) ' true ' are brought together for the
purpose of drawing a particular conclusion, a
glaring falsehood may result. E.g., it would in
general be granted that ' iron sinks in water,' yet
it does not follow that because ' this ship is iron
'
it will sink in water.' Hence syllogistic proof
'
seems quite devoid of the * cogency ' it claimed.
After a conclusion has been * demonstrated ' it has
60
THE FAILURE OF FORMAL LOGIC
still to come true in fact This flaw in the Syllogism
was first pointed out by Mr. Alfred Sidgwick.
(e) The formal Syllogism, moreover, conceals
another formal flaw. An infinite regress lurks in
its bosom. For if its premisses are disputed, they
must in turn be ' proved.' Four fresh premisses
are needed, and if these again are challenged, the
number of true premisses needed to prove the first
conclusion goes on doubling at every step ad
infinitum. The only way to stop the process that
occurred to logicians was an appeal to the 'self-
evident ' truth of ' intuitions '; but this has been
shown to be argumentatively worthless. From this
difficulty the pragmatist alone escapes, by assuming
his premisses provisionally and arguing forwards, in
order to test them by their consequences. If the
deduced conclusion can be verified in fact, the
premisses grow more assured. Thus every real
inference is an experiment, and 'proof is an
affair of continuous trial and verification—not an
infinite falling back upon an elusive certainty,'
but an infinite reaching forwards towards a fuller
consummation.
(/) So long as the logician regards his premisses
not as hypotheses to be tested, but as established
truths, he must condemn the Syllogism as a formal
fallacy. It is inevitably a petitio principiL If the
61
PRAGMATISM
argument ' All men are mortal ; Smith is a man,
therefore Smith is mortal,' means that we know,
before drawing our inference, that literally all menare mortal, we must already have discovered that
Smith is mortal; if we did not know beforehand
that Smith is mortal, we were not justified in stating
that all men are mortal. Nor is it an escape to
interpret 'All men are mortal' to mean that
immortals are excluded from ' man ' by definition.
For then the question is merely begged in the
minor premiss. That ' Smith is a man ' cannot
be asserted without assuming that he is mortal.
If, lastly, ' All men are mortal ' be taken to state a
law of nature conjoining inseparably mortality and
humanity, the logician either already knows that
Smith is rightly classed under the species 'man/ andso subject to its mortality, or else he assumes this.
But how does he know Smith is not like Elijah or
Tithonus, a peculiar case, to which for some reason
the law does not apply ? Will he declare it to be' intuitively certain ' that whatever is called, or
looks like, a case of a 'law' ipso facto becomes
one?
The logician's analysis of reasoning, then, breaks
down. In whichever way he interprets the Syllo-
gism it is revealed as either a superfluity or a
fallacy: it is never a 'formally valid inference'
62
THE FAILURE OF FORMAL LOGIC
that can compel assent. But common sense is
undismayed by the pragmatist's discovery that if
the Syllogism is to have any sense its premisses
must be taken as disputable; for, unlike Formal
Logic, it has perceived that men do not reason about
what they think they know for certain, but about
matters in dispute.
4. It is not necessary to dwell at length on the
futility of the formal notion of Induction. Formal
Induction presupposes that enough particular
instances have been collected to establish a general
rule ; but in actual practice inductions always
repose, not on indiscriminate observation, but on a
selection of relevant instances, and never claim to be
based upon an exhaustive knowledge of particulars.
Hence in form the most satisfactory induction is
always incomplete, and differs in no wise from a
bad one. ' All bodies fall to the ground ' is an
induction which has worked. 'All swans are
white ' broke down when black swans were dis-
covered in Australia. The validity of an induction,
then, is not a question of form.
The necessity for such selection no intellectualist
theory of Induction has understood. All have aimed
at exhaustiveness, and imagined that if it could be
attained, inductive reasoning would be rendered
sound, and not impossible. Their ideal ' cause ' was
63
PEAGMATISM
the totality of reality, identified with its 'effect,'
in a meaningless tautology. Nothing but volun-
tarism can enable logicians to see that our actual
procedure in knowing is the reverse of this, that
causal explanation is the analysis of a continuum,
and that 'phenomena,' 'events,' 'effects,' and
' causes ' are all creations of our selective atten-
tion; that in selecting them we run a risk of analyz-
ing falsely, and that if we do, our ' inductions
'
will be worthless. But whether they are right or
wrong, valuable or not, real reasoning from ' facts
'
can never be a ' formally valid ' process.
We are thus brought to see the hollowness of
the contention that ' Pure Eeason ' can ignore its
psychological context and dehumanize itself. Athought, to be thought at all, must seem tvorth
thinking to someone, it must convey the meaning
he intends, it must be true in his eyes and relevant
to his purposes in the situation in which it arises
—
i.e.}
it must have a motive, a value, a meaning,
a purpose, a context, and be selected from a greater
whole for its relevance to these. None of these
features does intellectualist logic deign to recognize.
For if truth is absolute and not relative, it is all
or nothing. Yet no actual thinking has such trans-
cendent aims. It is content with selections relative
to a concrete situation. If it were permissible to
64
THE FAILUKE OF FOKMAL LOGIC
diversify a debate
—
e.g., about the authorship of the
Odyssey—by an irruption of undisputed truths
—
e.g.,
a recitation of the multiplication table—how would
it be possible to distinguish a philosopher from a
lunatic ?
Formal Logic is either a perennial source of
errors about real thinking, or at best an aimless dis-
section of a caput mortuum—i.e., of the verbal husks
of dead thoughts, whose value Formal Logic could
neither establish nor apprehend. A real Logic,
therefore, would most anxiously avoid all the initial
abstractions which have reduced Formal Logic to
such impotence, and would abandon the insane
attempt to eliminate the thinker from the theory
of thought.
65
CHAPTER VII
THE BANKRUPTCY OF INTELLECTUALISM
We have now struggled through the quagmires of
intellectualist philosophy, and found that neither in
its Psychology, which divided the mind's integrity
into a heap of faculties, and comminuted it into a
dust-cloud of sensations; nor in its Epistemology,
which ignored the will to know and the value of
knowing; nor in its Logic, which abstracted thought
wholly from the thinking and the thinker, and so
finally from all meaning, could man find a prac-
ticable route of philosophic progress. But our
struggles will not have been in vain if they have
left us with a willingness to try the pragmatist
alternative, and convinced us that it is not a wanton
innovation, but the only path of salvation for the
scientific spirit.
But before we venture on it, it will be well to
restore confidence in the solvency of human thought
by analysing the causes of the bankruptcy of
Intellectualism and exposing the extravagance of
the assumptions which conducted to it.
66
THE BANKRUPTCY OF INTELLEGTUALISM
Was it not, after all, an unwarranted assumption
that severed the intellect from its natural connection
with human activity? No doubt it seemed to
simplify the problem to suppose that the function-
ing of the intellect could be studied as a thing
apart, and unrelated to the general context of the
vital functions. Again, it was to simplify to assume
that thought could be considered apart from the
personality of the human thinker. But it should
not have been forgotten that it is possible to pay
too dearly for simplifications and abstractions, and
that they all involve a risk, which the event may
show should never have been taken. So it is in
this case. Its rash assumptions confront Intellec-
tualism with a host of problems it cannot attack.
It can do nothing to assuage the conflict of opinions
which all claim truth with equal confidence. It
cannot understand the correction of error which
is continually proceeding. Nor can it understand,
either the existence of error or the meaning of
truth, or the means of distinguishing between them.
It has no means of testing and confuting even the
wildest and maddest assertions. It cannot discrim-
inate between the intuitions of the sage and of the
lunatic. It is forced to view energy of will in
knowing as a source merely of corruption, and
when it finds that as a psychic fact willing is
67
PRAGMATISM
ineradicable, it must conclude that we are consti-
tutionally incapable of that passive reflection of
reality which it regards as the sine qua non of
truth. Hence, if disinterestedness is the condition
of knowing, knowledge is impossible. And it is
so entangled in its unintelligible theory of truth
as a copying of reality that, rather than renounce
it, when it finds that human knowing is not copying,
it prefers a surrender to Scepticism.
Yet is not its whole procedure a signal example
of human arbitrariness and perversity? We pro-
fessed to be impelled by logical necessity at every
step, but were free to escape from all our perplexi-
ties by adopting the pragmatic inferences from them.
The Pragmatic Method of observing the conse-
quences readily suggests the means of discriminat-
ing between truth and error, of sifting values and of
testing claims. And, though not infallible, it is
adequate to all our needs. The pragmatic notion that
Truth is practical closes the artificial gulf between the
theoretic and the practical side of life, and assigns
to truth a biological function and vital value. The
humanist contention that Truth is human rescues
man from the despondency in which his failure to
grasp absolute truth had left him. The Protagorean
dictum that Man is the measure of all things assures
him that his knowledge may become adequate to
68
THE BANKRUPTCY OF INTELLECTUALISM
his reality, and that the value of truths and the
differences between truth and error also are suscep-
tible of estimation.
True, this policy averts the bankruptcy of the
intellect by scaling down the intolerable charges
on it. True, practical knowledge is not absolute
;
but if it is enough to live by, is it not better
to live by it than to be lured on to perish in the
deserts of Scepticism by the mirage of an absolute
truth not humanly attainable ? True, verification
is not ' proof,' but as its conclusions are not in-
corrigible, its defects are not fatal, and its demands
are not impracticable. True, no truth and no
reality are wholly 'objective,' in the sense of
wholly indifferent to our action ; but to say that
the human and ' subjective ' factor in all know-
ledge must be taken into account does not preclude
our apprehending and measuring an ' objective
'
world as real as, and more knowable than, any
other theory can offer.
Thus the proposals of Pragmatism for reconstruct-
ing the business of the intellect, and rescuing it
from the bankruptcy of Intellectualism, are not
unreasonable. They open out to it a prospect of
recovering its credit and its usefulness by returning
to the service of Life.
69
CHAPTER VIII
THOUGHT AND LIFE
The mission of Pragmatism is to bring Philosophy
into relation to real Life and Action. So far from
regarding Thought as a self-centred, self-enclosed
activity, Pragmatism insists upon replacing it in its
context among the other functions of life, and in
measuring its value by its effect upon them. So far,
again, from regarding the abstract intellect as a
vast Juggernaut machine which absorbs and crushes
the individual thinker, it treats him individually
as having his own constitution, raison d'etre, and
intrinsic interest, and credits him with a power to
make new truths and to enrich the resources of
thought. Each thinker has before him an individual
situation, a system of aims and values, a stock of
knowledge and of means from which he must select
what is relevant to his ends, and so cannot escape in
any judgment from the responsibilities of a personal
decision.
70
THOUGHT AND LIFE
Thus, for Pragmatism every thought is an act with
a person behind it, who is responsible for launching
it into the world of fact. The result of this change
of attitude is immediate. In the first place, as has
been shown in Chapter V., by bringing thought
face to face with the whole experience upon which
it claims to work, we are enabled to find a tangible
rule for evaluating its assertions and distinguishing
truth from error. And, secondly, by recognizing
that the mind is not an apparatus which functions \
in a vacuum, but is a constituent of an individual *
organism, we see that thinking^ always depends
upon_j^urpose_L for it is the purpose of an inquiry
which gives reflection its cue, and determines its
scope and (most essential of all) its meaning.
We are thus led from the narrower logical ques-
tion, 'What constitutes the "truth" of a statement?'
to a wider outlook, from which we can survey the
place of knowing in human life at large. This
may be called the transition from Pragmatism to
Humanism. This last word was introduced into
philosophic terminology by Dr. Schiller in order
to describe his general philosophical position as
distinct from the original question of the theory of
knowledge, which had been treated by James under
the name of Pragmatism.
To the Humanist the best definition of life is one
7i
PRAGMATISM
which displays it as throughout purposive, as a
rational pursuit of ends. This raises the question
of the validity of valuations. Valuation is a wide-
spread human practice. In their most general
aspect we classify all objects as 'good' and 'bad,'
according as they are ends to be pursued or avoided,
or means which further or frustrate the pursuit of
ends. This general antithesis between the 'good'
and the ' bad ' has numerous specific forms, applic-
able to different departments of human activity.
Thus, in conduct, actions are judged 'good' or
' evil ' and ' right ' or ' wrong'
; in thinking, ideas
are ' true ' or ' false,' and ' relevant ' or ' irrele-
vant'; for art, objects are 'beautiful' or 'ugly,'
and so forth, for the modes of valuation in life are
innumerable. Any one of these adjectives either
denotes value or censures lack of worth, and each
gets its meaning by reference to the specific pur-
pose, moral, aesthetic, or intellectual, it appeals to.
The summum bonum, or supreme good, will then be the
ideal of the harmonious satisfaction of all purposes.
"What, then, from the standpoint of Humanism,
is the function of ' truth-values ' in our life ?
They indicate a relation to the cognitive end.
W7hat is this end? Surely not self-sufficing? Atruth that is merely true in itself has no interest
for human life, and no human mind has an interest
72
THOUGHT AND LIFE
in discovering and affirming it. Truth, therefore,
cannot stand aloof from life. It must somehow
subserve our vital purposes. But how shall it do
this ? Only by becoming applicable to the reality
we have to live with, by becoming useful for the
changes we desire to effect in it. Whoever will not
admit this, and renders truth inapplicable, does in
fact render it unmeaning.
The fact that thought essentially refers to a1reality ' external to it in no way diminishes its
purposive character. Whether the mind is idealiz-
ing an aspect of reality (as in mathematics) or
abstracting, classifying, and predicting (as in
science), it is always the fact that a particular
kind of reality is needed for some serious or trivial
purpose which guides the operations of the thinker.
A mind which craved to embrace all or ' any ' reality
need not think; it would do better to float without
discrimination upon the flux of change. This proce-
dure would be so absolutely antithetical to humanknowing that it seems a wanton paradox on that
account to treat it as the final goal of knowledge.
Actually, of course, the philosophers who claim to
be devoted to pure theory follow no such course.
They deliberately choose their ideal of what is
worth knowing
—
e.g., ' God,' or * the unity of all
things,' or * the laws of the universe'—and, dis-
73
PRAGMATISM
regarding all other existences, they pursue the kind
of reality they desire because of its religious or
moral or aesthetic value. For there could be no
greater mistake than to suppose that the common
antithesis between ' reality ' and the ' un-real ' usually
means the same thing as the distinction between
what ' exists ' and what is absolutely non-existent.
On the contrary, it is usually a judgment of value.
We may say that the ' haunted ' house is real and
the ' ghost ' is not ; but as an hallucination the
ghost is real enough. Utopia is unreal for the
politician, but exists as an ideal for the theorist.
The Platonist treats our physical world of sight
and touch, which we think the most real of all, as
a mere illusion compared to the 'Ideas1
of his
metaphysical world. The thinker who declares he
wants to know all about 'reality' does not mean
that he wishes to investigate everything which in
any sense exists, but that he wishes to know what
he considers best worth knowing—and this, of course,
implies a personal valuation, a purged and expur-
gated extract, which will not offend his taste. So all
philosophies are, in fact, selective. Even the more
conscientious rationalists show very little anxiety to
include in their intellectual scheme a knowledge of
their opponents' opinions—indeed, they seem to
think that the existence of such facts may be made
74
THOUGHT AND LIFE
dependent wholly on their will to recognize them.
An exposition of Pragmatism is for them a ' reality
'
which does not count : it is not worth knowing about.
And this is only natural, after all. For ' reality,' the
object of the mind's search, is always a selection,
conceived after the likeness of the heart's desire,
the product of a human purpose.
To recognize this is to appreciate the wisdom of
Humanism's refusal to treat the world, for good or
bad, as a given and completed whole. For not only
is what we call the real world always a selection
from a larger whole from which we have ventured
to exclude great masses of irrelevance, but every
day brings fresh experience, and may bring fresh
enlightenment. And since man has always an
interest in improving his condition, is it not futile
to forbid him to re-make his world as best he can ?
Why prematurely claim to have reached finality,
when unexpected novelties may shatter any system
before it is even completed ? Our world is plastic,
it is most * really' what we can make of it,
and the process of our making is not ended.
Whether a decree of Fate has fixed any ultimate
limits to our efforts we have no means of knowing,
and no occasion to assume. Is not our wisest
course, then, to persist in trying? It is bad
method ever to despair of knowing what we need.
75
PRAGMATISM
For good or ill, the world with which the
Humanist contends is always a world that reveals
itself to him. Reality, as it is assumed, presumed,
or guessed to be ' in itself,' apart from our experi-
ence of it, is cancelled from his reckonings. For
he cannot discover how he (or anyone) can get any
* knowledge' or 'intuition' which transcends all
human faculties. The theories of metaphysicians
on these lofty themes he regards as personal pos-
tulates which, in so far as they cannot be subjected
to the pragmatic method, must remain open ques-
tions. Human experience does not warrant such
gratuitous demands. It confirms neither the rigid
system of unchanging fact which realism postulates
(seeing that the only facts that science speaks of are
ever changing in its progress), nor finds its problems,
conflicts, and errors credible as a reflexion of any
Universal Mind, unless Idealism ultimately repudi-
ates the sanity of its Absolute.
— The superiority of Humanism, then, lies in this,
that it does not discourage human enterprise by
assuming that the real is completely rigid and
eternally achieved without regard to human effort.
In the drama that unrolls reality, every man, it
teaches, has a duty and a power to play his humble
but essential part. Humanism is neither an
Optimism nor a Pessimism— both of which must
76
THOUGHT AND LIFE
consistently, in their extreme form, deny that reality
can be improved—but concedes to man the right
and duty to improve the world. It impresses us
with the necessity of acting, it vindicates the proce-
dure of acting on our hopes, it shows us how we
may correct our errors, and so gives reasons for our
faith in the possibility of Progress.
77
BIBLIOGRAPHYWilliam James :
The Principles of Psychology, 1890.
The Will to Believe, and Other Essays in PopularPhilosophy, 1897.
The Varieties of Beligious Experience, 1902.
Pragmatism, a New Name for Some Old Ways ofThinking, 1907.
A Pluralistic Universe, 1909.
The Meaning of Truth, 1909.
Some Problems of Philosophy, 1911.
Radical Empiricism, 1912.
F. C. S. Schiller:
Biddies of the Sphinx, 1891 (revised edition, 1910).
Axioms as Postulates (in Personal Idealism, ed. HenryStart, 1902).
Humanism : Philosophical Essays, 1903.
Studies in Humanism, 1907.
Formal Logic, a Scientific and Social Problem, 1912.
Henry Sturt :
Idola Theatri, a Criticism of Oxford Thought andThinkers from the Standpoint of Personal Idealism
,
1906.
J. Dewey and Others :
Studies in Logical Theory, 1903.
J. Dewey :
The Influence of Darwinism, and Other Essays, 1910.
H. V. Knox :
The Evolution of Truth. Quarterly Review, No. 419.
April, 1909.
A. W. Moore :
Pragmatism and its Critics, 1911.
A. Sidgwick :
The Application of Logic, 1910.
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